As far as notebooks go, Lenovo’s ThinkPad range is considered the most reliable and hard wearing out there, but far from the best looking notebooks. The ThinkPad Edge tried to change this perception but didn’t really go far enough. Now Lenovo has announced its latest addition to the ThinkPad Edge series, the E420s and the soon to launch E220s and the company has taken things to the next level in business casual notebooks.

As far as notebooks go, Lenovo’s ThinkPad range is considered the most reliable and hard wearing out there, but far from the best looking notebooks. The ThinkPad Edge tried to change this perception but didn’t really go far enough. Now Lenovo has announced its latest addition to the ThinkPad Edge series, the E420s and the soon to launch E220s and the company has taken things to the next level in business casual notebooks.

Due to Intel’s chipset problem the new ThinkPad Edge models got delayed after having been initially announced back at CES in January, but the E420s has gone on sale in the US today with the smaller, lighter E220s model expected to follow early next month. The E420s will come with a selection of Core i3, i5 and i7 processors while the E220s will feature a selection of ULV Core i5 and i7 processors.

As the name suggests, the E420s is a 14-inch model, although at 1.88kg it’s as light as most 13.3-inch notebooks if only a smidgen wider at 349x236x31.2mm (WxDxH) at its thickest part. That’s pretty impressive if you take into account that the E420s has a built in slot-loaded optical drive, as well as a space for both a 2.5-inch hard drive and a mSATA SSD. Lenovo is offering configurations in some markets where you can get an 80GB mSATA SSD as well as a hard drive fitted for a combination of speed and storage space.

In the US it appears that the E420s will only be available with Intel’s integrated HD 3000 series graphics, but we noticed that in Taiwan Lenovo will offer it with switchable graphics in the shape of an AMD Radeon HD 6630M with 2GB of dedicated graphics memory. As for other markets we’ll just have to wait and see until Lenovo introduces the E420s as Lenovo always tend to offer different SKUs in various markets.

Other features include up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, 802.11a/b/g/n, WiMAX option, Bluetooth 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and D-sub connectivity, a standard USB 2.0 port, an always powered USB 2.0 port and an eSATAp (powered eSATA/USB combo) port, a memory card reader, a biometric security fingerprint scanner, a combo headphone/mic jack and a 720p capable webcam. The only really disappointing feature is the comparatively small 4-cell 48.8Whr battery pack, although Lenovo claims that it’s good for up to 5.4h of usage.